Product transportation and delivery using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is becoming popular. For safety purposes, the total weight of a UAV has been limited by the federal aviation administration to 55 pounds including the weight of the UAV's payload.
It is not uncommon for consumers to place product orders such that the total weight of the products in an order, together with the weight of a UAV, would exceed 55 pounds. In such situations, UAV operators (e.g., delivery drivers) have to manually load a UAV multiple times to effectuate a multi-step delivery of the products in an order to the customer. Such manual multi-step loading of a UAV to effectuate a single delivery to a single customer is inefficient and costly, wasting valuable time for a product delivery operator. Also, the customer would be expected to manually unload the UAV multiple times after each drop off by the UAV of a portion of a delivery, possibly exposing the customer to the moving propellers of the UAV, which is undesirable.
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments. Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.